A Miraculous week!

Una Semana Milagrosa,

Elder Phelps is from Mesa, about 5 minutes,walking distance, from the Temple. He has been out for about 8 months and has so far served in Oakley and Nampa. We are really having a good time serving together and have seen a lot of miracles. We have also been getting along very well.

The first picture I attached is of the De Jesus family, I taught them a year ago in Caldwell and they got baptized while I was there, this is them outside of the Boise Temple after their sealing.


It was such a spiritual event to witness, and you could just see the joy on their faces. They, and I, waited, and prepared, for 1 year 2 months and 11 days to go to the temple and it was well worth the wait. They are such a great family that all of the missionaries love, because they are so humble and giving. Not to sound prideful, but they were really excited to see me there, because they weren't expecting me to make it.

Later that day we had our third baptism in three weeks. Melissa Rodriguez is the 11 year old daughter of Zenaida, who is the "wife", and she is such a cool girl, a sponge of information. One time while I was over there I told the family my first name and she over heard it from the other room and hasn't forgotten it. She is working on memorizing the Articles of Faith, she knows all of the book in the Book of Mormon. Last night we went over to their house and were reading in the bible as a family and she was memorizing the books in the new testament. She is awesome and will be a great leader in the church some day.

We really have had a great time serving together and are enjoying all of the lords blessings that we have seen. The Lord has really blessed me in this area for all of the work Elder Cottam and I have done, and I know that he will bless Elder Phelps and I just as much, if we continue to work just as hard.

As soon as I get my camera card I will send my card home so you all can enjoy the other pictures that I have been taking.

Love

LDR Paxton

As a mom side note this week, on Easter Sunday I got a call from one of Elder Paxton's investigators. She used to live in Ontario Oregon and Chris was teaching her, but now she has moved to Phoenix. Chris gave her my phone number and she called me and told me that she got my number from Elder Paxton and she wanted to ask if I could send the missionaries in Phoenix to her house. Of course, I obliged and called the visitors center at the temple and they will have the missionaries in her area contact her. It was fun to have a little "Chris Connection" with his missionary work.

No Transfer...

Hello Family,

This past week was really good. We had a baptism of Mike Burbank and it was a great turn out. A lot of their friends from Boise came and were great support. His dad, Conrad, was really emotional because he felt that he should have been there with him at his side in a white jump suit, but we know that he will be soon enough.

Here is a picture with Mike and Elder Cottam

I am grateful for the opportunity to serve with Elder Phelps. A few weeks ago I was on exchanges with Elder Halaz, one of our Zone Leaders, and he "received revelation" during a district meeting and he told me that I was going to be serving with Elder Phelps. So I wasn't very surprised when I heard that I was staying and that Elder Phelps would be coming. I am really excited to be staying in this area and I really can't wait to help all of the investigators progress towards baptism.

This Saturday we are going to have another baptism of Melissa. I am pretty sure I have talked about her in past emails, and I am very excited about it. It will be really good to have the spirit in their home to help her parents stay faithful until they can get baptized themselves. And we are helping Bertha Perez prepare for her baptism on the 30th she and her daughters really enjoy coming to church and she is pretty ready to be baptized. We are also continuing to work with the other people who have dates, Donna Lewis-May 2, and Juan Luis-May 11. We are Very grateful to have such great success going on and are happy that we were chosen to be the ones that get to serve here while all this good is happening.

Love,

Elder Paxton

Valdez Baptism

So this last weekend we had our baptism of Katie Rose Valdez. These are a few of the pictures from the baptism.

It went really well, even though she had to be baptized four times because her dad kept saying the prayer wrong and would go a head and dunk her even though the witnesses were trying to stop him. We eventually got it right and she is now a confirmed member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Later-Day Saints.

Our other investigator, from that ward, that was planning on getting baptized this thursday has gotten a little case of cold feet. So we just went and adressed a couple of the "problems" that she had and we just told her to keep reading and praying about the Book of Mormon and that she will know that it is all true. She still wants to be baptized but just wants to be more sure.

We have in our other English ward a baptism planned for this Saturday and as far as we know it will happen. One sad thing is that his dad should be getting baptized with him but he can't quit smoking, so if any one knows any thing that can help we are up for suggestions.

In the Spanish branch we should also have a baptism this Saturday of an 11 year old girl with super active, non member parents, who pay tithing and everything and who would be baptized but they are waiting on a divorce(her parents are Cornelio and Cenaida). She is really learning a lot and knows so much for just going to church for about two months. Last night she told us that she likes talking to us and likes to learn about Jesus.

That is the report for this week.

Love,

Elder Paxton

Loved Conference!

Hello Family,

14,131,467 is a great number. It is also interesting to think that 1) I am one of those numbers and 2) I have been helping other people become part of that number as well. If you haven't figured out what it means, that is the total number of members world wide,as of December 31 2010, and we are continuing to grow. I think that we will make a big jump this year with the call to missionary work that we had last October. One other good number is 52,225, the number of full time missionaries world wide, which I am part of as well. General Conference is a great weekend. I really enjoy hearing from our leaders and feeling the Spirit with our investigators. We were able to watch four out of the five sessions with investigators, they all really enjoyed it, as far as I know.

One by product of General Conference is that after we watched the final session with the recently baptized Valdez family (they got baptized my first Saturday in Ontario) we got to talking and their 18 year old daughter, who didn't get baptized with the rest of the family. We have been reteaching her to see if she would want to be baptized. She asked us what all she would have to do in order to be baptized. So we explained everything and we asked when she would like to be baptized and she says that she wants to this week sometime. So we set the date for this Saturday and are making all of the arrangements to make it happen. We are very excited, but not nearly as excited as her mom is.

That was really cool. Other fun times we had this week was going back to my original area on exchanges. It was really fun because I got to see a couple of people that I knew. We had dinner with the Branch President, he has been released since I left, but I still call him presidente. And I also got to see the De Jesus family, the family that got baptized while I was serving in Caldwell. They are making great progress. They moved out of their tiny tiny one room apartment, into a really nice two bedroom house. They have had another child. And they just finished their temple preparation classes and are just waiting to be interviewed to go to the temple for their endowments and to be sealed. I really can't wait to see that happen. I also hope that I will be able to attend.

That is all the fun times for this week.

Love,

Elder Paxton